US imported millions of used, substandard medical rubber gloves from Bangkok: Reports

The United States imported tens of millions of used medical gloves from Bangkok during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, an investigation by CNN revealed. Migrant labourers in the outskirts of the Thai capital had been trying to clean and stuff used nitrile medical-grade gloves when the healthcare department auto raided the warehouse in December. As per the report, those 'blood-stained,' sub-standard gloves were being prepared to be shipped to the States in bulk.

The disposable medical gloves have been in high demand and low in supply since the pandemic hit countries worldwide. Apart from the US, the second-hand gloves counterfeit were also shipped to different countries, the names of which were not mentioned. The inbound shipments to the US came after an American company pointed out to the Customs and Border Protection and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that it had received visibly soiled gloves from a Thai company, the CNN report stated. Despite the alert, the US registered import of tens of millions more gloves from Thailand until July.

"There is an enormous amount of bad product coming in, an endless stream of filter second hand and substandard gloves coming into the US of which Federal authorities, as it seems, are now only beginning to understand the enormous scale," an industry expert Douglas Stein told CNN.

The month-long probe also revealed that such shipments into the US were a result of FDA-approved suspension of import regulations at the peak of the pandemic. Soiled gloves and several other illicit trades of substandard medical products have posed potential threats to health workers. The nitrile gloves are the "most dangerous commodity on Earth right now," CNN quoted Stein as saying. Despite the reports of fraudulent imports, the US is yet to reopen border regulatory protocols.

FDA assures about "steps" undertaken to ascertain standards of medical imports

In August, the FDA directed seizure or imports of personal protective pieces of equipment from Thai companies. The order came at least eight months after the agency followed up on the complaints by the US entrepreneurs like Louis Ziskin of American company AirQueen. As reported by CNN, Ziskin spend $2.7 million on poor quality, used gloves that arrived from Paddy the Room in Thailand. He shortly alerted the FDA and CBP, however, without any immediate effects. Meanwhile, FDA has confirmed CNN that it had taken a "number of steps to find and stop" illicit imports of unapproved products. However, it refused to comment on the reports of the soiled gloves since criminal investigations are underway by US and Thai authorities.

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